


The Hermit and The Princess

by Ashling



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cats, Dialogue Heavy, Fatherhood, Gen, Horses, Pet Sitting, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-22 06:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19661632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Dear castinouterspace, I enjoyed your tags very much. I hope you like this!





	The Hermit and The Princess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catsinouterspace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsinouterspace/gifts).



> Dear castinouterspace, I enjoyed your tags very much. I hope you like this!

The old man had a face that matched the Montana mountains piercing the sky behind him, rugged and worn, but his pale grey eyes still seemed sharp.

"You got a name?" he said.

"Aaron," said Erik.

"Tobias." They shook hands. Behind them, Nina had taken the lead line from Erik and was walking the new horse up and down in front of the stables, murmuring to it softly.

"How much for three weeks?" said Tobias.

"Depends," Erik said. "Why'd it turn into three weeks?"

"What?"

Erik tried to shrug off his suspicions. Likely there was a normal explanation. "You said on the phone you wanted to board the horse a week."

"Yeah," Tobias said gruffly. "Well, I talked to some people. Changed my mind. Is your girl all right?"

Erik glanced over. Nina was looking at the horse very seriously, and from the tone of her voice, probably arguing with it. Hard to tell at that distance.

"She thinks she can talk to horses," he said mildly.

Tobias made a noncommittal noise, a little _mmh_ , before he said, "What does the price depend on?"

"What kind of customer you are."

"Rich or poor?"

Yes, although Erik didn't like to advertise the sliding scale, mostly because he didn't like anyone to know any information about the ranch if he could ever help it. 

"Friends or clients," Erik said instead. He'd given this spiel maybe fifty times, and it had only failed him three times. "Regular places, they've got paperwork and liability releases and feed fees and all of that. Have to, for legal reasons, and tax purposes." He leaned on _tax purposes_ just right. 

Tobias spat. 

"For friends, though," Erik said, "I can look after their animals just as easy as I look after my own. And I might get a present in return for my trouble, the way you get a neighbor a souvenir t-shirt when they go on vacation and you water their plants."

"I see." Tobias looked right at home with this. He took out a pack of cigarettes, and before he could produce a lighter, Erik did. Erik wasn't a smoker himself, but it helped to fit in. After one long drag, Tobias exhaled, and then smiled. Even though he looked older than the hills, something about that smile made him look young and roguish. "Well, let's be friends."

"Three weeks is a while to take a horse," said Erik. "Might be you could donate some to my daughter's education fund? Her old laptop's going to shit and she needs a good one for online classes."

"Would two hundred fifty do it?" said Tobias.

"Are you including feed in that?"

"Figured a friend would include everything." 

Erik smiled himself, this time. "Make it three hundred fifty."

Tobias snorted "How expensive are these goddamn computers?"

"You don't wanna know."

"Three hundred, then."

Erik held out his hand, and just as Tobias was reaching out to shake it, they were interrupted by Nina, speaking in German.

 _We can't take Curly,_ she said.

Erik fully turned around. _What?_

 _Curly, the horse. He won't stay with us, he'll be too much trouble, and he promised as much,_ said Nina.

Erik didn't bother trying to figure out the particulars. Nina was always right, when it came to the aims of animals. _Why?_

"Everything all right, there?" said Tobias.

"She's hungry for lunch," said Erik. 

_Seriously, dad, he says he'll pick fights with the other horses. And bite._

Tobias cleared his throat. "Does she, ah, not speak English?" 

Nina gave them a tiny smile. "Yes."

"She's shy around strangers," said Erik. "And new to the country. My sister's kid."

"Oh. Good of you to take her in."

_Curly is worried about Tobias. He's not a happy man. He can't be alone._

"'Scuse me," said Erik, to Tobias. And then, to Nina: _Can't you just lie to the horse and tell him that Tobias is going to be with relatives, and he'll be happy and fine?_

Nina looked shocked. _I can't lie! What if Tobias gets into trouble, or dies, and then we have to take care of Curly for the rest of his life, and then he's mad at us the whole time 'cause we lied to him?_

_In this scenario, I'd be fine. You'd be the one who lied to him._

_Dad!_

_Fine, fine._

Nina went back to walking the horse up and down the drive, and Erik turned back to Tobias. "Sorry about that. Just telling her I'll get a good lunch soon."

"No, it's all right." Tobias was on his second cigarette. 

"So where are you going to be for three weeks?"

Tobias's eyes narrowed. "Who's asking?"

Erik nearly winced. Yeah, it hadn't been his best, that one. "I just need to know where to call in case of any emergency."

"Isn't this the kind of paperwork bullshit that friends don't need?"

"Just a phone number and a location, just in case." 

"Mmh. Well, I—I'm not sure." 

Gruffness and taciturn people, Erik was used to. Even defensive people. But Tobias looked a little uncertain, had the face of a man trying to cook up a lie. 

"Just a phone number would do," Erik said. 

Was that shame? "Think I'd have to look it up," Tobias muttered.

"Go ahead," said Erik. "We have internet here and all."

"Do you now?"

"Had to pay an arm and a leg for it, but it's worth it to get her Netflix."

"Netflix?"

"This computer thing, has all these movies on it. Puts her right to sleep."

"Oh."

They stood staring at each other for a minute, Erik with an easy smile and a nail in his back pocket, Tobias smoking his third cigarette rather nervously.

"Do you mind?" Erik said, eventually.

Tobias looked caught. Then he dropped his cigarette and ground it under his heel. "Sure, sure," he said quickly.

"The network's named 'Ranch Network,'" said Erik. 

Tobias got out a smartphone from his back pocket. It looked a bit scratched-up, but functional. "What's the password?"

"Password."

"High security place, is it?"

"Something like that."

By now, Nina was leading the horse back down the drive, towards both men. Tobias had his back to her, and Erik could see her holding up her phone and waving it at him.

He glared.

She glared back.

After a second, her phone suddenly yanked out of her hand and silently shot towards Tobias, till it hovered just a few inches back from his right shoulder, angled so it could see whatever he was typing.

"Got it," Tobias said after a minute. "One eight hundred two seven three eight two five five."

Erik wrote that down on his own phone. "Great, thanks." 

Behind Tobias, Nina's phone floated back to her. She plucked it out of the air and squinted at it.

"Got everything you need, then?" said Tobias. "I got places to be."

"Everything but the money," said Erik.

"Oh, that. Half before, half after?"

"That works."

Tobias shuffled back to his truck, and rooted around in the glove compartment till he found a paper envelope. 

"Here we are," he said after a moment. "Did we say two hundred and fifty?"

"Think we said three hundred," Erik said dryly.

"Right." Tobias counted out the grimy twenties, then handed it over. Erik hesitated. 

_It's good,_ said Nina.

Erik took the offered money, and shook the offered hand.

"Afternoon," said Tobias. Ten seconds later, he was back in the truck and driving back down the winding, hilly path.

 _Well?_ said Erik.

_He's going to the Golden Valley Recovery Center._

_Recovery from what?_

_According to the website, alcohol._

_Oh._

As Nina led the horse towards the stable, Erik fell in step with her. 

"Are you going to behave now, or what?" he said to the horse, slipping back into English without even noticing it. For whatever reason, his default language when talking to humans was still German, but for horses it was English.

"Curly?" said Nina. "Curly will be the best horse there ever was. He's very happy about the whole rehab thing." She tilted her head and looked the horse in the eyes.

The horse whuffled.

"If you say so," said Erik.

It was dinnertime after that. Erik gave each horse its portion of oats, then sat in one of two rocking chairs situated in the far corner of the stables. It wasn't long before Nina emerged from the house, bearing two enormous, haphazard chicken and tomato sandwiches. They ate in silence, Erik lifting shovels in thin air to muck out a recently vacated stall, Nina watching some kind of cooking video on her phone. 

Erik was just beginning to think of perhaps going back to the house and doing some bills when Nina put her phone down. That meant a Talk was on the horizon. Her phone rarely left her hand for any reason.

 _What would you have done if he wasn't going to rehab?_ Nina said.

_Dealt more carefully with the horse._

_That's not what I meant,_ she said, which Erik well knew. _What if he was here for bad reasons? What if he was lying because his cover wasn't very good?_

_I would find out who he was._

_How?_

_I would ask him._

_But liars lie._

_There's different ways to find out the truth._

_But what would you do with him if you found out the truth was that he wanted to find us and tell other people where we were?_

_It wasn't likely he was anyone like that at all. If someone was to come after us, they would come in big numbers. Probably with helicopters. And we would probably see them from miles away, because we're on a hill._

_Dad._

_What?_

_What do we do if they do come?_

Erik had thought about all this far more than was probably necessary, and just now, in the calm of the stables, with a full stomach and a healthy child, he didn't want to think of running again. 

_I'll protect you,_ he said, finally.

_What about the horses?_

He snorted. _Of course that's your first thought. But they won't think of the horses at all._

_But if we run away or get killed, who will take care of them?_

Erik stopped rocking. Three stalls down, the shovel dropped to the straw with a dull thud. _Nobody is going to kill us,_ he said.

Nina stared back at him. For a split second, she didn't look quite sure, and that broke his heart.

 _Fine,_ she said, eventually. _What if we run away?_

_Nobody has taken our picture, and all the business is in cash, and I talk a lot about small government and people minding their own business to every customer we have. They won't find us. Even if they had our pictures and our fingerprints and our names, they couldn't find us. I'm good at running._

_Dad. I meant about the horses._

Erik stifled the urge to swear. _I'll open the gates behind us, so the horses can run out. It's summertime. They'll eat grass and eventually someone will come back to pick up their horse and they'll find them all get it sorted out. Is that what you were really worried about?_

_I wasn't worrying, I was thinking._

_Is that what you were thinking about?_

_Yeah._

He thought that was it, because without further ado, she returned to her phone. Instagram this time, pictures of fruity-looking desserts with lots of whipped cream, which boded well for his upcoming birthday. But then Nina said, rather too casually, _Do you think I'd be any good at running?_

Erik wasn't sure what that meant. _You were good when you were little._

_I was a baby. I couldn't be good at anything except pooping._

_You didn't cry very much._

_I haven't had a chance to try running yet._

_It's not something you want to try._ He reached over and stroked her hair. She let him.

_I won't mind trying, if we have to, one day._

_Okay._

_I can be helpful._

_You're the most helpful kid in the country, probably. But don't you like it here?_

_It's home here,_ she said thoughtfully. _I don't have anything to compare it to. I like it the way fish like water. But today, if he had been after us...I was just wondering._

 _We will have to run again someday._ Erik's chest tightened as he said it. _But not yet. They're always looking for us, but we're smart. Not yet._

Nina looked up at him. _Not yet,_ she agreed. 

Erik had never really been able to hide himself from her, even when she was tiny, so he knew some of what he was feeling must be in his face now. Still, offered her a smile, and did his best with it.

In reply, she clambered up onto his lap and curled up there, her legs dangling over the arm of the rocking chair. 

_Not yet,_ she repeated.

Erik kissed her forehead. 

Presently, a cat crept into the stable, padded towards Erik, and then used his leg as a ladder to Nina's stomach. Nina meowed at it. It meowed back. Then it tucked its furry orange-gold head under her chin, and fell asleep at about the same time that Nina did.

Erik didn't move, but far away, the lock on the front door turned, and then the door opened. Out of the door flew a metal bowl. Then the door closed and locked again. The bowl flew across the yard, into the stable, and towards Erik until it came to a hover in front of him, about three feet away. Out of the bowl rose two aluminum knitting needles, bright blue, which were halfway through what looked to be a thick purple scarf. Those two needles, and a single gold bead that was threaded on the purple yarn, began to move together, and as the sun hung lower and lower in the west, inches of new-made scarf began to lower into the bowl.

The cat's tail twitched in its sleep, but it slept on. Nina started to snore. And Erik hummed to them both a song whose words he could no longer remember, but whose tune his mother had taught him long ago.


End file.
